In a culture where family, love and marriage are such central ideas and institutions, what happens when any or all of these breakdown? This question is at the heart of Poet's Memorial Hospital Fund. The narrative follows two friends over the course of a decade. Both come from toxic families and are searching for a different kind of life, and feel that because they have chosen the path less traveled, they are immune to the pitfalls and complexities of adulthood. They discover otherwise.They go from being young men with a panoramic sense of life's possibilities to adults cornered by choice and conscience. In the longest section of the novel, Survival Mode, both men lose all sense of forward momentum and confront the frustration of inertia. They navigate love and divorce, cancer and addiction. Through it all, the friendship endures and buoys them as they walk the fine line between disenchantment and redemption.